208 CHRONICLES OF A CLAY FARM. 



Before the discovery of Steam-power, and its 

 application to machinery, there was no such thing as 

 a motive power that could be carried about, and 

 applied where and when and how you pleased, except 

 animal power. The plough, the spade, or the hoe 

 ( with their varieties), were the only possible modes of 

 effecting the task of cultivation. The comparatively 

 recent discovery of steam-power altered the condition 

 of human life in this particular. The modes of action 

 to which cultivation was before limited, and which 

 are exemplified in the use of the three instruments 

 just named, became, on the discovery of steam, no 

 longer the necessary and only modes of performing 

 the act of tillage. From the nature of things it was 

 morally certain that whenever that new Power was 

 applied to this act, it would be through an instru- 

 mentality as different from the plough, as the plough 

 was from the spade. If a man will only give him- 

 self the trouble to think how total a revolution the 

 application of steam effected in the navigation of a 

 ship, and the locomotion of a carriage, he cannot 

 very well fail to see what is meant by the saying 

 that a new power requires a new process. It is a 

 solecism in dirt, as well as science, to attempt to yoke 



